The Autobiography of Rhett Butler, CSA
by historicalromancegal33
Summary: Rogue. Renegade. Outcast. Gambler. Lover. Captain Rhett K. Butler is one of the most famous Southerners of all time. He was, of course, a character in one of the most important books of the 20th century. But if you want to know the real story of Gone With the Wind you have to read, know, and understand the real story of Rhett Butler, CSA.
1. Chapter 1

_**Chapter 1 **_

My boy came back to me in the middle of the night.

I'd relocated to Paris not too long after I'd moved on from New York and its memories, after my mother had died and my sister married and there was, finally, nothing left for me in America. I toyed with the idea of going back to San Francisco-all of us who were there in '49 dream of returning, eventually-but in the end I chose Paris because it was one of the few places in the world that still held any novelty for me. I considered Chicago, London, and Berlin, but I chose Paris in the end because I knew I could live well there.

Not that I had much living left in me, of course.

And so my boy found me there, in Paris, in the middle of a rainy spring night. The clouds had been black and heavy all day, and in America that kind of downpour would have been violent and it would have been punctuated with wild bursts of lightning and thunder. Paris is much too civilized for unpredictable noises of course, but water is wet no matter where you go. And so, after I stumbled out of bed and down the stairs and opened my door to confront the luckless soul who'd rung my bell at that ungodly hour, my reward was a drenched smoking jacket, a mouth full of water-

And a short burst from the barrell of Wade Hampton Hamilton's eight-dollar Remington 95 deringer pistol.

His gun jammed, of course, but I reacted to the sight of the barrel without thinking and I'd slammed him against the foyer wall even before I'd realized that the scrawny, very drunk man I'd nearly broken in half was actually a boy. Wade Hampton was nearly 22 years old on that May morning in 1883, but he was still-and would always be-a boy to me.

As a matter of fact, he wasn't just any boy. He was _my_ boy, my son, and one of the few people I remembered fondly from the time I spent in Georgia during-and after- the war. Wade wasn't technically mine-he was the unwanted byproduct of my first wife's first marriage-but I'd saved his life on more than one occasion, and he'd saved my own multiple times, although not in exactly the same way. Wade hated me in the way that all men hate their step-fathers, but although our relationship had necessarily cooled after I'd left the South, and I hadn't seen him in nearly a decade, I'd never imagined that-

"Wade?" I questioned, leaning down and pulling him to his feet. I was 55 that spring and I felt every ill-spent moment of my life in my hips and knees whenever I moved too fast or tried to lift too much weight, but I gathered him up quickly and without grunting too much. After all, every second he spent on the floor was another moment he spent boiling in anger, and I knew that we couldn't have the conversation we needed to have if he stayed angry. "Wade? What are you doing here?"

"I came to-" he winced as he rose to his feet, then pushed me away. And I let him push me away even though his arms were weak and limp and his face was pale and he was slurring his words. "I came to kill you, Rhett Butler."

"Wade-"

"How do you like that, _Captain _Butler?" He jabbed his fingers against my chest and sneered up at me. He'd grown since I'd seen him last, but I was still probably a foot taller than he was. "You never thought you'd ever see me again, did you, _Uncle _Rhett?"

The Wade Hampton I'd known had always been soft-spoken and somewhat prissy, a sweet boy who'd been prone to silences and embarrassments. But the man standing in front of me was fairly leaking with a sarcasm that was much hotter and heavier than the rainwater that drenched both of us. Wade had never had much in common with his mother Scarlett O'Hara Hamilton Kennedy Butler, but at that moment he sounded just like her: moody, snappish, and cold in a way that made me want to hit him even though I'd sworn off violence after the War.

"Of course I thought I'd see you again, Wade," I said gently, kicking the gun into the darkness of the nearby drawing room and then closing the heavy green front door behind him. "I hoped I'd see you again, as a matter of fact."

"You never come to Atlanta to see us."

"Your mother-"

"It's all your fault, you know?" He questioned, his voice softening a little bit as he ran one of his tiny hands through the curly brown hair plastered across his pale, heart-shaped face. "Everything is your fault."

"Maybe it is," I nodded and switched on a leaded-glass lamp that threw purple-and-green shadows around the entryway. I'd purchased that town house in the center of Paris, just off the Rue de la paix, because it had seemed cozy and warm and much friendlier than the modern buildings I'd seen in other parts of town. But on that night the whole house seemed huge, mysterious, and cold. And I watched as Wade stared scornfully around the room, blind-drunk but not too drunk to miss the ostentatious designs or the new walnut furniture or the-

"I see you've done very well for yourself," he sneered and his eyes narrowed with hate. "Everybody else went broke in the recession and panic back in '73 and '74, but you didn't. Of course you didn't, you bastard."

"I sent you money, Wade."

"I used that for mother," he shrugged, leaned against the white wall, and then slid down until he was sitting on the floor once again. I sat down too, slowly and carefully, anxious to maintain eye-contact, anxious not to be too intimidating. "I used everything for mother. She sends her regards, of course."

"Wade-"

"You shouldn't have left us," he told me, his delivery a slow, deliberate drawl even though his words made absolutely no goddamn sense. "You shouldn't have let this happen to us."

"When you're older-"

"I'm old enough to understand, Rhett Butler," he snarled at me, and I had no retort because he was right. Wade Hampton was 22 years old, the same age I was when my father threw me out of his house and struck my name from the family bible. The same age I was when I ran away to New Orleans and first met Belle Watling and Anderson Menteur. The same age I was the first time I won a poker tournament.

The same age I was the first time I killed a man.

"I'm old enough to know it all, Rhett Butler," he stretched out his short legs and scowled at me. "I'm old enough to know all about you and Uncle Ashley and mother and Aunt Melly. Hell, I was there for most of it, anyway. And what I didn't understand or know at the time, well-county gossip has given me most of the information down through the years. Believe it or not."

"I believe it."

"I was there for the war, and Frank Kennedy's funeral and-and," he pinked slightly. "And I was there for mother's madness and all the rumors. And I was there when Bonnie died."

I wasn't supposed to let him get to me.

Any other man would have died instantly upon threatening me at my front door in the middle of the night, but I wouldn't have killed Wade Hampton. He'd come all the way to Paris in secret, under his own power, because he needed to get something off his chest, and I'd thought it was the best course of action to actually let him get it off his chest. He obviously wanted to blame me for everything that had gone wrong in his life, and I was quite happy to take the blame if it meant it would relieve whatever burdens he'd been carrying around in his heart since I'd left Atlanta all those years ago.

But this was too much.

I could take the blame, I could take the accusations, I could take the recriminations, and I could accept a murder attempt now and then. I was used to being defined as a rogue. But blaming me for Bonnie's death was too harsh.

"You killed her," Wade said, his brown eyes wide as he watched me, as he waited for me to take his bait, as he waited for me to react to his brutal statement with equally brutal physical force. He _wanted_me to take a swipe at him. He _wanted _me to snap, for some sick and twisted reason I understood without fully understanding. I'd tried these same tactics years ago with my own father, but that was after the old man had gone out of his way to destroy me.

On the other hand, I'd done nothing at all to Wade Hampton Hamilton.

I hadn't visited him much, but I had written him over the years. And I'd paid for his education and I'd made sure that he'd gotten a good start in business after he'd left the University. I'd given his mother a generous settlement in the divorce, and he'd lived a privileged life in Atlanta and he'd been received in all of the best homes thanks, in part, to my efforts. I hadn't been a model man over the years by any stretch of the imagination, but throwing Bonnie in my face was wrong.

Very wrong.

"I was there that day too, Rhett Butler," he taunted me, hatred making his smooth southern drawl sound harsh and gritty. "Although I bet you forgot to remember that I was home at the time. Yes, I heard her neck snap all the way in my room. Sounded like a goddamn 2-by-6 splitting in half."

"That's enough, Wade."

"Internal decapitation," Wade continued, drawing out each syllable quietly, until the the sounds crashed against my ears like thunder. "That's what her death certificate says. I remember the way she looked in her coffin when-"

I slapped him hard across the face before he got the rest of the words out of his mouth, hitting him with so much force he blacked out before his head bounced against the wall. The violence gave me a moment of satisfaction, but then that moment twisted into darkness as the reality of what I'd done stabbed against my chest. I would have stood up, carried him out to the street, and rolled him into a nearby gutter if he'd been any other man. But he was just a boy-he was _my_ boy-so instead I just sat there in the cold foyer, gritted my teeth, and watched him closely, all too aware of the dangers that lurked in the hearts of misguided southerners like Wade.


	2. Chapter 2

**(Thanks for all the views and feedback on Chapter 1 everybody!)**

**Chapter 2**

I could begin my story with a story about the beginning of my life-but I won't. All of that sort of writing has been done plenty of times before The War, and ever since Appomattox it seems that anyone who fought on either side feels obligated to tell long, drawn out tales about their origins, their parents, and their hometowns. I was born in Charleston as the world knows-but Charleston is not the world. And Charleston certainly doesn't explain my life or my relationship to Wade or his mother or anything else that might be important to understanding my side in all of this.

In truth, my behavior and my experiences cannot be truly defined by one place, one time period, or one particular group of people. I suppose I could take the easy route and offer up my time in Charleston, New Orleans, West Point, Nassau, Atlanta or San Francisco as justification for my efforts and misdeeds, but none of those places has anything to do with who I am or what I've done. I could start my story in any of those places and nothing would change: a shift in locale would not alter the conclusion. So instead of wallowing in my South Carolina boyhood or my well-documented years in Atlanta or my alleged wild times in New Orleans, I will simply begin my story in Panama City, Panama in 1849, on the hot, humid, rainy July afternoon when the world ended and my life as you know it truly, finally began.

"Three queens," I placed my cards face-up on the table and glared into the eyes of the big Texan sitting on the other side of the table. I don't remember much about that man now, but I do remember that he was older than my father, fat as a bear, and richer than Nahab thanks to a winning streak that had carried him through most of the morning. He was wearing a big hat and a big frown, and he hated the way I played cards. But that didn't rattle me because after twenty-one years on this earth I was quite used to being hated. "Looks like I've got you beat."

"I haven't even laid my cards down yet, stranger," he drawled, returning the violence in my stare with a hatred that burned straight through the heavy, thick tropical air surrounding us. We were playing stud poker in the backroom of a back alley sporting house, far from the smart streets and the beaches and the government buildings that made up that part of Panama in those days. I had come to Panama after I left Charleston because I was headed for California, and transiting the narrow, Central American isthmus was the quickest and cheapest way to venture to the Pacific Ocean in those days.

I'd had just enough savings for transportation from Charleston to California when I'd left South Carolina, but the Gold Rush had gathered speed and popularity every day during the spring and summer of 1849. And by the time I arrived in Panama, the old economic rules of supply and demand had astronomically raised the rates for the second half of my journey. I'd only planned on stopping in Panama for a week at most, but now circumstances had essentially turned me into a pauper, and I was waylaid there in that jungle purgatory until I could scrape together the money to buy a ticket for the bunk in the musty cargo hold of one of the barely-seaworthy ships that were headed toward the northern coast of California.

Other lads in my position would probably have either given up or gotten a job down at the docks, loading and unloading bananas and illegal goods and breaking their backs for their efforts. But I had a talent for card games and finding trouble, so instead of heading back home or becoming a Central American day-laborer, I decided to earn my way to California by playing poker.

It had seemed like a good idea at the time.

But now, as I sat at that tiny table in the gloomy room in the sticky weather and stared into the eyes of that bitter Texan, I wondered if I'd made a terrible mistake. I had won quite a bit in that game since I'd sat down, but winning didn't mean anything at all when you were dead.

And at that moment, at the end of that game of stud, I suddenly realized that I was only a few moments from a very ugly death.

"I've got two jacks," the big man on the other side of the table told me, his blue eyes gleaming with fury and violence even as sweat dripped down his brow. "I win."

"Two jacks don't beat three of a kind," I spoke up, defending myself even though I knew there was absolutely no point in reasoning with him. "Mathematically, poker is supposed to reward the player with the rarest statistical collection of cards, and-"

"I ain't playing by no mathematic rules," he said. "I'm using Texas rules."

"Texas rules?"

"Texas rules," he nodded and growled at me. "Texas rules are the best rules in the world."

"I've never heard of—"

"Don't argue with me, boy."

In one moment we'd been sitting at the table, the last two players left in a room that had once been filled with hopeful men from all over the world who'd had nothing in common but deep pockets, high hopes, and a total misunderstanding of statistics and the realities of stud poker. I'd quietly cleaned out every man who'd come into the room over the past 15 hours, and the Texan was the last man standing. We'd both gone all-in on that bet and I knew I'd won from the moment I'd received the queen of spades that would match the diamond-and-heart twin ladies that were already in my hand. In one moment I'd been calculating just how quickly I could collect my winnings and race down to the wharves and hop on the next boat out of that godforsaken former pirate town, but in the next—

He'd called me boy.

And then we were both on our feet with our pistols drawn and our eyes narrowing, the hatred between us hot enough to make the entire, humid room sizzle into a rolling boil. I'd sworn off gun-play when I'd left Charleston, not because I was particularly sickened by having killed that man in the duel on Lodge Alley, but because I had liked it a little bit too much. But now I aimed directly at the Texan's heart without hesitating, even as he foolishly pointed the barrel of his gun toward my forehead. Texan's were a rough blend of bravado and stupidity, and this man was no different, focusing the trajectory of his bullet on my head when any gunfighter worth his salt knew that a torso shot was as close to a sure thing as one could get in that particularly line of work.

He cocked his pistol and I cocked mine too, and after all these years I don't remember a goddamn thing about the man's face or the room surrounding us or even very much about the cards spread face-up on the table between us. But I do remember the ironically simultaneous click-roll-click our respective pistols made as we raised our wrists to a ready position, as we grinned at each other and prepared to blow each other to kingdom come. It's a sound I've heard more than I've cared to over the course of my life, but I didn't dread the noise in those days. It wasn't so much that I wanted to die, but I certainly wasn't afraid of death. And after everything I'd been through, death in a Panama brothel seemed as appropriate and likely as any other possible alternative. Particularly since—

"Hey Tom Ficklin, the Carlsbad's leaving in less than two hours," a low, sultry, southern female voice piped up at that moment, from the dark shadows surrounding the table. I didn't so much as breathe while I kept my weapon trained on his oversized, sweaty belly, but the other man blinked hard and gazed off to his right, toward the owner of the voice. Some of the tension went out of the room almost instantly, I suppose, but I was still angry and so alert that my scalp felt like it was pulled tight over my skull. "You've got enough in that pot to pay for a stateroom _and_ a little extra for a nice hotel room when you get out to California. If you leave now you just might make it down to the docks in time to register."

"But this doggone kid—"

"He's just a kid, Ficklin," the woman said, her accent too sweet and too gooey, like honey that had been left in the sun too long. She came into the light and I recognized her as the same woman who'd been serving us drinks and meals for the run of the game. She looked a little younger than I was, but as she came toward the two of us I saw that she had the eyes of an old woman who'd seen it all. "He's a kid and he don't know about Texas rules. He don't know you won the game fair and square on account of your jacks, but I bet he knows now, don't you boy?"

"I don't—"

"I said you know better now, don't ya?"

Rage bubbled deep inside of me, mingling with confusion and hurt pride and frustration and a bunch of other emotions I couldn't quite classify. I'd won this card game fair and square, and I'd beat that big ugly Texan with nothing but my own smarts and wits, and it was outrageous for anyone to assume that I would agree to anything besides perhaps congratulations on a job well done. Yes, the Texan—Ficklin was his name, apparently—would probably kill me if I so much as touched the money, but as a Southerner I'd long ago realized that death was better than dishonor.

Wasn't it?

"I know better," I nodded and lowered my gun ever-so-slightly. I didn't know her any better than I knew him, but she apparently knew the Texan quite well. And if I'd had any money left, I would have bet it all on the notion that this wasn't the first time she'd seen the big, ugly man on the other side of the table pointing a gun at a scared, clueless kid. She was trying to save my life.

I didn't know why she thought I was worth saving, considering I hadn't even tipped her once when she'd delivered our drinks, but she did. And even in the midst of my rage I was still not dumb enough to gaze suspiciously at the back molars of a gift horse. I lowered my gun even though I wanted blood to show for my pains, lowered it because I knew it was the civilized option-and the only way for me to live and see another day.

"See, Ficklin?" She didn't look at me as she moved closer to the table and helped the Texan gather up the pile of crumpled banknotes and shillings and tarnished coins. She was on the short side and she had a tiny waist, a gap-toothed smile, and red hair that was a shade brighter than the ripest tomatoes I had ever seen. "He knows better now. He knows you've won."

They swept the money—_my_ money—into the man's shoulder bag, the woman kissed him briefly on the cheek, and then he was gone. Their efforts couldn't have taken longer than thirty seconds, but as I stood there and watched the last, best hope for my fare to San Francisco exit the room, it felt as though time had slowed to a crawl.

"You've got to learn how to take a strategic loss, kid," the woman told me when the two of us were left alone in the otherwise empty, dark, hot room. "What would have happened to us if Ficklin had kilt you just now?"

"Us?"

"Me and Anderson."

"I thought his name was Ficklin?"

"I ain't talking about him."

"Then—"

"By _us_ I meant me and Anderson," she paused and turned to me, and I realized in that moment that she was beautiful. She wasn't a lady—her English was too bad and she was wearing too much rouge and her skin was dusted a ridiculous shade of pale white—but she was beautiful anyway. Astonishingly beautiful as a matter of fact, in a way I didn't automatically understand at that young age—although, truth be told, it had been many years since I'd been able to claim innocence with a straight face. "Anderson Menteur, I meant, him and me. We run this place. The poker game. All of it. And if Ficklin had shot you the local police would have swooped down on this place so fast demanding bribes and pressing charges, we would have been bankrupt before dinner time."

"I see," I shifted uneasily on my feet then sat down in my seat, unsure of what else to do, unsure of anything at all. I squinted up at her, and she sat down in the chair to my left with her back to the door.

She smelled like fried chicken and whiskey and sweat, but she was glaringly attractive and bewitching nonetheless, all big blue eyes and bright red lips and smooth white skin. She looked like something out of a young boy's dream with her huge bosoms and tiny waist and dimpled smile and soft, friendly eyes; and I immediately glanced away because I wasn't a boy anymore.

Looking back I realize that I should have left the room right then. She was clearly a woman on the make-not a lady at all- and she was somehow explicitly offering favors even though she hadn't said a false word to me as yet. In the ensuing years I've wondered if my life would have turned out differently if I'd had the fortitude and energy to have picked myself up and left that room and trundled down to the docks like the other luckless losers who'd accidentally found themselves delayed in Panama City.

But I was tired. And she was attractive. And I was drunk and my body responded to her nearness and her appearance even before my mind warned me to keep my distance. I had spent the past three weeks racing south, racing away from everyone and everything I'd known back home in Charleston. I hadn't unburdened my soul to anyone since I'd left the United States, but now—

"My name's Belle," she told me, her voice soft and twangy and much warmer than the air around us. She had a southern accent, but I couldn't quite place it even though my mother's tutoring had given me quite an ear for dialects. I knew her speech pattern wasn't coastal, but other than that I was stumped. "Belle Watling. I'm from Memphis. Me and Anderson both, actually. We've been down here for about a year, running this poker game a few times a season."

I considered her statements for a moment; then I considered my possible range of responses for an even longer period of time. Something about Belle Watling seemed honest, but at the same time everything about our situation and our location made me want to conjure up an alias and supply a false story. I was torn between my truth and inventing an entirely new truth, and I hesitated as I tried to make up my mind.

"My name is—"

"Rhett Butler from Charleston," she grinned at me and I flushed with a variety of feelings I didn't like but couldn't quite dismiss. "I know your name and I know where you're from. And I know you've just blown your fare to California by losing that game to Ficklin just now. And I just might have a way for you to get some of that money back."

"How?"

"It won't be easy," she told me, her eyes sparkling as she jerked her head back toward the kitchen. "But if you're as smart and capable as they say you are-and willing to work with me and Anderson on something we've been cooking up-I think you'll be on your way to San Francisco in no time flat."


	3. Chapter 3

"I'm not in love with Belle," Anderson Menteur announced loudly during the first moment of our acquaintance, directly after my life savings disappeared in that poker game, and as soon as the lady in question ushered me into his tiny, sweltering bedroom on the second floor of the building. Anderson was propped up in bed and his skinny legs were exposed and his whole face had an unhealthy, golden pallor which indicated a recent bout of yellow fever. Everyone in Panama had yellow fever or malaria in those days, but Anderson's boyish face and his glittering light brown eyes made him seem substantially more lively and healthful than the sick, hopeless masses I'd seen languishing around the town. "I'm not in love with Belle, but we have an understanding."

"You don't need to explain anything to me," I shrugged. "It's none of my-"

"We're friends is all."

"Sure."

"We grew up in the same part of the South, you understand," he continued, either too feverish or too clueless-or too desperate-to realize that I wasn't interested in his explanations. I couldn't have cared less about the parameters of this man's relationships with Belle Watling, but he obviously felt the need to gabble on about it-so I let him gabble. I hadn't learned much about the world since I'd left my father's home in Charleston, but I knew enough to let a talker talk. "I'm from Memphis and she's from just across the river in Arkansas. Or so she says. We're kindred spirits, but we're not in love."

"Fine."

"We could never be in love," he said, ignoring my attempt to end this rather uncomfortable discussion. Belle had departed silently almost as soon as she'd deposited me in the room for my audience with Anderson Menteur, but the subject matter was uncomfortable despite her absence. Or perhaps because of it. "I'm holding out for a nice girl. A nice wife."

"I understand."

"Somebody with class."

"Understood."

"Good then," Anderson looked me in the eye and smiled. "As long as we understand each other, then I suppose it's time for me to make you an offer for your services."

I didn't know how to respond to his statement. It seemed as though the two of us had arrived at a contract for services of some sort; but as I sat there in his bedroom, sweating and dizzy from the oppressive Central American heat, I had absolutely no idea about the boundaries of our agreement. In one moment I'd been playing cards in the kitchen, and in the next he'd been discussing the status of his relationship with Belle, and in the next-

"What services?" I questioned, losing my cool and my patience all at once. "What are you talking about?"

"You are Rhett Butler, aren't you?" He gazed evenly at me. "From Charleston?"

"Yes," I nodded slowly, reluctant to reveal my identity even though it was clear that everyone in Panama already knew where I was from, why I was there, and what I was all about. "I am."

"You're a very skilled poker player, Mr. Butler," he told me. "We've heard the gossip about your abilities with cards. And your exploits on the boat on the way down here. Why we even heard that you-"

"I'm not going in with you on a gambling combine," I interrupted him and shook my head. "I don't need investors and I don't need a bankroll and I don't need help. If Belle hadn't interfered in my affairs a few moments ago I would already be on my way to California right now. If you want to learn to gamble-then I suggest you start by gambling. I don't need leverage. I just need a good game and a few fish and to be left alone, for goodness sakes."

"I ain't talking about using your poker skills," Anderson shook his head and chuckled a little bit. "Substantial and impressive though they may be. No sir, I'm not talking about poker at all. Or gambling or cards or anything to do with luck."

"You're not?"

"No."

"Then what are you talking about?" I pressed him, raising an eyebrow and jamming my hands into my trouser pockets and tapping my foot because I was impatient-oh so very impatient-to vacate the premises. I didn't have anywhere to go or a penny to bless me of course, but I wanted to lick my wounds and try my luck down at the docks. "Because I'm afraid I don't understand."

"I'm talking about your map making skills."

"Map making?"

"You went to West Point, didn't you?"

"How the hell did you know that?"

"Gossip, like I just told you," Anderson said. "It's not everyday that we get real live Southern gentry from good old Charleston here in Panama, you know. Most of the people headed toward California are ex-convicts or future convicts or murderers or whores or desperados-or worse. They're all going out there to strike it rich, and I intend on partnering with you to make a mint by selling maps to each and everyone of them."

"The United States government has already beat you to it," I mumbled, thunderstruck by his idiocy. "California was surveyed by the Spanish long ago, and there aren't very many corners of the state that haven't been drawn up in official government maps. I'm sorry, but there's no money in depictions of wagon trails and watering holes, Mr. Menteur."

"I'm not talking about anything so simple," he laughed again as Belle sashayed back into the room. She had pulled her hair back and had wiped off a little bit of her makeup, but she was still drenched in cheap perfume and she was wearing a fussy little Japanese kimono that was undoubtedly supposed to call to mind a Geisha girl but which instead looked like something straight out of a nightmare about samurais. I only gazed at her momentarily, but as I turned my eyes back toward Anderson I noticed that he kept his eyes locked firmly on Belle.

And it was in that moment that I knew.

I mean, I'd known it as soon as I'd walked into the bedroom and Anderson had started discussing his relationship with Belle without prompting, of course. But the flash in his eyes was unmistakable, and I could read his emotions as plainly as though they were spelled out in one of my father's dictionaries: love, hate, lust, despair, pain, and more than a little bit of exhaustion. It almost hurt to look at him while he looked at her, and I ducked my head instinctively against the raw, naked, helpless desire in his eyes.

I was embarrassed for him, really. He looked like a hapless character in a back alley melodrama, and the people I knew back in Charleston would have burned him at the stake in the middle of King Street for displaying his feelings in such an obvious fashion. I had been ostracized for breaking the unwritten rules of conduct, but Anderson would have been ex-communicated, tarred, and feathered for the way he stared at Belle in that moment. It was theoretically perfectly acceptable for a man to have a private passion for his wife or his children or his mistress or his concubine or his dog, but Anderson was barely a man.

And Belle was certainly no one's wife.

Or mistress.

Or concubine.

Her once-and-future profession was actually already all too obvious, and I was humiliated on his behalf, but Anderson didn't have the good sense to snap out of his glazed-eyed stupor. Instead he continued staring dreamily at Belle, and Belle matched his affection with blue eyes that glittered like diamonds even though they weren't-and couldn't have been-diamonds at all.

"Am I talking about anything as simple as drawing roads and ferry crossings, Belle?"

"Of course not, honey," Belle shook her head. "Of course not. Regular map making is too...regular for you, isn't it? You always say you've got to think big to make it big, don't you, sugar?"

"That is what I always say," he nodded his head. "I'm not talking about regular maps, Mister Butler. Any fool could do that, and any fool could buy those for thirty-five cents once they arrived in California. I'm talking about gold maps. Prospecting maps."

"But how in the world would I draw prospect maps?" I questioned. "I haven't even made it to California yet, remember? I don't know where the lodes are, I don't know the best places to pan for gold, and I certainly don't know where all the general stores and tent-towns that have cropped up around the American River are located. I'm not the man for this, Anderson."

"Who said anything about knowing anything?"

"Then I don't-"

"You don't understand," Anderson nodded and sat up just a little bit. "That much is plain. But since you're so central to our idea and obviously not quite as, shall we say, familiar with the world as the rest of us down here in Central America, I'll go ahead and explain it all to you right now."

Looking back, it's all kind of funny, isn't it? In 1849 the whole scheme seemed ridiculously illegal and sinful to my mind, but after everything I've seen and done over the past few decades it's not quite a devious as I thought. Anderson Menteur didn't know where the California gold was located of course, but neither did anybody else. And so we would capitalize on the ignorance of the masses by drawing up phoney maps and selling them to the millions of fools who were passing through Panama City on their way west. They would pay a premium for maps of the California gold, and they would pay incredible amounts for official looking maps under the assumption that these offerings would ultimately lead to more riches than the other crudely drawn, dirty, rolled up charts that had been circulating for most of that year.

It was a pretty good plan, all told.

And I was an important part of the plan because I had been at West Point. Ever since the War Between the States families have sent their sons to West Point in the hopes that they'll eventually become a brilliant tactician like Robert E. Lee or William Sherman. But in my day West Point only meant drill, French lessons, more drill, engineering lectures, night drill, and surveying courses.

I hated West Point and had never been any good at military drills or discipline of any kind, but I was more than competent at reading maps. And I was certainly able to draw a reasonably detailed depiction of the California countryside freehand, something that my uneducated, illiterate, and perpetually confused new friends Belle and Anderson couldn't have done if their lives had depended on it. And so, while the two of them had hatched the deception without my help, I was an accessory to the criminality because I was an essential part of the plan. I wonder now, of course, what would have happened if I'd simply not gotten involved with the two of them. It was in my power to quit the house as soon as I understood the plan, but-

I didn't.

I didn't want to.

It was a crooked, half-baked, half-brained scam, and it was fraudulent enough to land the three of us in jail for a long time if we were caught, but we weren't going to be caught. Simple as that.

I was sure of our fate, sure of our freedom, sure that we would be able to skirt by and avoid the law and make a decent living at it, too. It might have been a deceitful scam, but I was alright with it because our marks were greedy strivers trying to strike it rich quick. We were going to get one over on the grasping fools heading west, and that was fine with me because the people streaming to the Pacific were all short-sighted spendthrifts who gave no thought the morrow. They were foolish and I would have been a fool not to take advantage of their high-spirited optimism, and in my mind Anderson and Belle's plan was almost honorable compared to the schemes of the slave powers and industrial powers I'd left back on the Atlantic coast. It doesn't make much difference in retrospect given all my dubious deeds and everything that I've gotten involved in since those days.

But it made a difference to me then.

A great deal of difference, as I'm sure you will eventually come to understand.


End file.
